Planet Hugill

The album’s title seems to be intended as generically evocative rather than particularly descriptive, and whilst there are Winter themed pieces on the programme such as the engaging opener Winter Arrives, there are also pieces which Habershon describes as reflecting ‘the winter of mankind’, notably Requiem – Anna Akhmatova and the Pushkin-inspired The Bronze Horseman. But overall the album seems more a collection of recent pieces than one exploring a particular theme.

In style the music is flowing and melodic, often with quite an open textures and works such as Winter Arrives have an attractive rhythmic impulse. You can see why the music is popular on Classic FM as it is engaging and approachable with an instinctive feel to the melodic lines. All the works on the disc have been arranged by John Lenehan, so I am not certain how much is Habershon and how much Lenahan but the results are always attractively appealing with some imaginative touches to the orchestration.

Habershon’s inspiration seldom takes her to the darker side and even the Anna Akhmatova inspired piece rarely, if ever, plumbs the depths. Her evocation of Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman, written for just clarinet (Habershon), cello (Fuller) and piano (Lenahan) comes closer, perhaps because it is not afraid of stripping things back and the work opens with the solo clarinet evoking the mud-flats of the Neva.

This is perhaps an album to dip into rather than listen from beginning to end. In terms of style, I am not sure that the term cross-over is particularly helpful here, and perhaps we need to resurrect the rather neglected term light-music.

—Robert Hugill